CHED to upgrade SUCs, community colleges to fulfill mandates
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) will implement standards to upgrade the performance of State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and community colleges to fulfill their mandates.
CHED 6 Education Program Specialist Dr. Rex Casiple said the external campuses were previously CHED-supervised schools absorbed by the SUCs in compliance with the Modernization Act.
Casiple said that recently CHED received authority from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to strengthen its monitoring of SUCs, and community colleges by placing them under the agency’s supervision.
“It has been observed that the SUCs’ external campuses do not tend to focus on what their actual mandates are,” Casiple said.
“SUCs’ external campuses are mostly agricultural or fisheries schools because Western Visayas, is mostly agricultural and coastal region, and that is where their budget is based on,” Casiple added.
The CHED official, however, said that instead of focusing on their specializations, they have prioritized Information Technology (IT) courses, Nursing, Engineering, whose usual low performance in board exams, pulls down the performance of the SUCs as compared to the national level.
Casiple said that the latest agriculturists’ board exam yielded only 28 passers, while there are only so far, two agricultural engineers in Western Visayas.
“We need more agriculturists to improve our agricultural lands, where we have to concentrate for improved production, as well as rebuilding our countryside,” Casiple further said.
He also said that with the responsibility of overseeing and guiding the SUCs and the community colleges placed under it again, CHED can better redirect them to their actual mandates.
He further said that considering also the different situations in the SUCs, and as part of competence building, CHED will also train SUC heads, administrators on educational management. (PIA6/ESS)